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European Association
of Environmental and Resource Economists
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EAERE President Correspondence
Colleagues,
This is my final Commentary as President.
It is easy to be portentous about the significance of ones term of office. Stephen Leacock put the case for his contribution as follows: When I state that my lectures were followed almost immediately by the Union of South Africa, the banana riots in Trinidad and the Turco-Italian war, I think the reader can form some opinion of their importance.
My two-year tenure as President of EAERE has taken place in interesting and disturbing times, with continuing and escalating conflicts around the world, suicide bombings and associated mayhem and murder, riots in France, all followed by a rise in police powers and erosion of rights for the individual, and a series of intense and very destructive weather-related events. But association is not causation.
Cardinal John Henry Newman was the founding President of my university - UCD Dublin. In Lead Kindly Light he sets out his modest ethos, and this also informs my view of how to make progress: I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.
In advocating small steps, the following shaped my thinking, and contributed also to a sense of urgency:
The opportunity costs of time are increasing for most of us. Even minor academic stars today are like modern Opera singers - their talents may be modest enough, but the world is their stage, and time is their most precious resource. This means that, to keep attracting interest and engagement from people of capacity, EAERE has to keep improving what it does and how it does it.
Given that time is so scarce, it is easy to draw a conclusion that all business should be conducted electronically. In Ireland, most of us are only one generation away from the land and the cattle market, where face-to-face contact, the handshake and the shared conviviality of a drink together have been since early Celtic times pre-requisites for successful business and social cohesion. I believe also in Woody Allen's dictum that '80 per cent of success is showing up.' And so your Council members showed up and met together from time to time to share ideas and move our agenda forward, in addition, of course to interacting electronically.
You can't get productively involved until you know what's going on. Communication is the first pre-requisite for commitment and action. And so we re-energised the Newsletter under Katrin Millock's leadership, I provided an occasional commentary, and our Secretary General Monica Eberle re-invented our web site as an effective voice, and kept in touch with you on administrative and managerial issues.
Most voluntary organisations eventually fail. This is not because what they do is not worth doing. It is because they fail to administer effectively, efficiently and persistently their governance, finances, their membership, their ever-increasing legal obligations, their fund raising, their activities and developments. The last Council made the decision to create a permanent Secretariat in FEEM, and this has provided all of these qualities that are so essential to sustainable organisational development. One example: it allowed us to apply successfully in 2005 to the European Commission for medium term (4 year) funding to support the Summer School; the latter is one of our adornments, and to have secured funding for a number of years is a great relief financially, and a great achievement in supporting the continued development of our field.
Centuries ago in Italy, the motto of an institution of learning known as the Accademia del Cimento, was 'provando e riprovando' - reject that which cannot be maintained in the light of reason and experience. We must have good theory, but evidence is a necessary complement if theory is to develop productively, and if our profession is to have credibility with those who must make difficult decisions. And so we encouraged the submission of evidence-based papers at our annual meeting in Bremen to give this strand of our profession more profile and status.
We have been inordinately shy in recognising outstanding achievement amongst our peers. And so we inaugurated the Outstanding Achievement Awards, which in Bremen were awarded to giants of our field - Jos Delbeke, Karl-Göran Mäler, and David Pearce. These recognitions were joyful occasions, made poignant and special now by the subsequent death of David Pearce. He has gone, but his benign intellectual and personal shadow will continue to provide many with continuing inspiration and support. Peter Bohm is another inspirational colleague who died in 2005 and leaves a space in our personal and professional lives that is very difficult to fill.
When we look ahead, we can see a Europe that faces great challenges. In many EU countries, rules and cultural reflexes still favour incumbents. Ireland is an interesting counter example. Since May 2004, about 100,000 Polish citizens have moved to Ireland, adding 2.5 per cent to the total resident population; a Polish newspaper is on the Newsstands, and a Polish radio station is about to start transmitting. These new entrants have already added tremendously to the economic and social life of the country, and are part of the explanation why the economy is expected to grow by about 5 per cent in 2005. Making a country economically and socially congenial to immigrants of quality is not a friction free process, and is helped in the Irish case by the fact that there is very little long-term unemployment. But is also clear that making it easy for new entrants has great benefits for all, and that 'incumbent bias' can be a very expensive and destructive asymmetry in social organisation.
The point is not to boast of the Irish success - we have had our own form of self inflicted economic nightmare, and no doubt will have again - but to argue that effective management of the macro economy is the essential pre-requisite for a successful continent and environment. With the introduction of the European Union emissions trading scheme we have set out on an exciting journey that can show the way forward in addressing climate change. But its credibility and therefore its attractiveness to others will be weakened if Europe as a whole continues to flounder economically.
Günter Grass has told us that 'the job of the citizen is to keep his mouth open.' We need to act on his admonition in regard to shaping the discourses on our European economy, and how important it is that considerations of environment be integrated in this debate.
A great Secretary General can make a President and Council look good by keeping all administrative matters in good order, by ensuring that alerts about upcoming events and challenges are timely and effective, by simultaneously identifying solutions to problems as they emerge, by being flexible in meeting crises, and by adding an imaginative impulse to the agenda and deliberations of Council. Monica Eberle has been a great Secretary General, and we are very grateful to her. I also thank: deputy President Nick Hanley and Council members for their support, endeavour and patience; Sandor Kerekes and Wolfgang Pfaffenberger who took the risks and delivered excellence in our annual conferences in Budapest and Bremen respectively; Michael Rauscher, who has helped on your behalf shape the upcoming World Congress in Kyoto in July 06; the editor of our journal, Ian Bateman, and Kerry Turner and their team for keeping this crucial strand of our intellectual life strong and growing; Katrin Millock who has revived this Newsletter to great effect; you our members who have contributed in numberless ways make us what we are, a vibrant, successful and enjoyable organisation.
Our field of environmental and resource economics can be likened to the stars of the sky, whose beauty increases when they are studied for a long time, and new stars are discovered. I would like finally to wish incoming President Tasos Xepapadeas and his incoming Council team the very best as they continue our reach for the stars.
Frank J. Convery
EAERE President
Past Correspondence
